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Zecco Review: Free Online Stock Trading

I decided to open a Zecco.com free trading account a few years ago back - at a time when the deep discount brokerage was still offering free online trades with no catches and no account minimums. Since then, the company has undergone numerous changes and developments of its free trading policy, not to mention weathered quite a bit of critical commentary and press regarding its underlying free trade business model. I think it's time I conducted a Zecco broker review and evaluated my Zecco trading experience as it currently stands. While I still use Zecco Trading and recommend it as a top online broker for individual stocks and exchange traded funds (ETF) to this day, due to some notable drawbacks, I have not yet made it my primary all in one broker account. But due to the attention that Zecco continues to receive among personal finance blog readers and new entrants to stock market investing, the low cost brokerage provider is worth a close review.

In case you were wondering, Zecco.com's rather unusual name is actually derived from the phrase - "Zero Commission Cost". The company is a low cost online brokerage that burst onto the discount broker scene several years ago vowing to change the brokerage landscape forever, while touting its unique offer of free monthly stock trades with no hidden catches or gimmicks. To this day, the Zecco Trading firm still does indeed offer zero-cost and commission free trades on stocks and ETF's for both market and limit orders, albeit now with account minimum requirements. But at its heyday and for quite some time, Zecco seemed to show up on the radars of every financial website and finance blogger's list of the best online stock brokers.

When it comes to low cost trading, it's frankly hard to do any better than an offer involving free stock trades. With aggressive marketing and promotion of its free monthly trades, Zecco has always greatly appealed to low cost seekers and active traders looking for the ultimate way to cheaply trade and invest in the stock market. But as a victim of its own success and popularity, the early years saw performance of Zecco's online trading platform greatly plagued by slowdowns and loading issues due to surging online customer demands and the technological limitations of its trading platform. Presently, the company is reportedly working to revamp its online investment website, improve its much to desired customer service, and retool its business model to comport better with the realities of today's market. Since its initial web 1.0 beginnings, Zecco has made many���� improvements and innovative enhancements, such as adding an online Zecco trading community for like minded investors to share investment tips and swap portfolio building advice, as well as greatly adding to its exclusive online library of educational materials. Much publicity (both good and bad) continues to surround Zecco's dubious decision to utilize and promote its collection of financial educational videos with the hosting assistance of the company's rather attractive and seductively alluring band of Zecco Sirens. While Zecco has probably not improved its credibility among serious investors with its use of extremely attractive girls to host its Zecco marketing material, this obviously gimmicky approach probably has helped them earn more than a few new customers (translation: sex sells).

Free Online Stock Trades and Low Commissions With Zecco.com

Despite any of its possible shortcomings, Zecco stands as the king of the low cost brokerages with its unique offer of free monthly trading privileges for those who satisfy certain account minimum requirements. Previously in the recent past, Zecco account holders received 10 free trades per month if they maintained a minimum balance of $2,500. Do to the difficult economy and realities of financial circumstance, free Zecco trades are now limited to account holders who maintain at least a minimum balance of $25,000 in their trading accounts, or make at least 25 online broker trades per month. For savvy savers, it's worth to note that even after the allotment of free trades are exceeded, stock trades are still only a mere $4.50 per trade. Even if one failed to meet the $25,000 minimum to qualify for free monthly trades, Zecco is still one of the deepest discounters around in terms of cost per trade. Option trades with Zecco are also priced very low - currently just $4.50 per trade and $0.50 per contract. Mutual fund trades are tabbed at $10.00 each.

Those who don't trade frequently will be pleased to know that with ordinary individual accounts, there are no account minimums or hidden inactivity fees to contend with. While, there is a $30 annual fee for retirement accounts like Roth IRA's and traditional IRA's, one ought to evaluate this cost in light of the greater potential savings one will receive from the free monthly stock trading privileges. For such a low cost and cheap pricing structure, Zecco Trading packs a pretty competitive package with its arsenal of respectable trading tools, investment research materials, and large social media community of like minded users and investors. But as with all seemingly great offers, one has to wonder - what's the catch with Zecco.com? If Zecco's free stock trades are so great, why isn't everyone and their uncle kicking down doors to become a Zecco customer?

According to Zecco sources and based on my personal observation, the catch with the free monthly Zecco trade offer is simply that the account customer must either maintain a minimum balance of $25,000 in their account or trade at least 25 times every month to continuously qualify. Furthermore, the free trading offer only nets you a total of 10 free trades per month. It's not like you are reaping a huge windfall of unlimited stock trades. With ordinary Zecco equity trades priced at a low $4.50 per trade to begin with, the monthly cost savings associated with the free trading promotion isn't exactly substantial or exceedingly astounding. However, for ordinary consumers looking for a way to invest on the cheap, every little savings helps in the long run. Zecco's automatic free trade offer is genuine and real - you just have to be aware that qualification����requires you to meet certain conditions every month.

The other possible catch or limitation with Zecco involves its recent struggles with customer service response. Due to the crushing weight of its own success, the broker has been working feverishly to improve its customer service reputation and overcome the growing pains of keeping up with heavy demand for its free trades. Along with customer service issues, Zecco also has limitation issues in regards to advanced trading tools and premium research access - features that full service and bigger online trading sites offer, but Zecco does not. But as always in life, you get what you pay for. Those who don't mind paying a bit more for the peace of mind that established customer service brings may want to look into other popular discount brokerage alternatives like TradeKing, a consistent winner of numerous online accolades for its outstanding customer service year in and year out (read my TradeKing review to learn more). At���� just $4.95 per trade for TradeKing compared to Zecco's $4.50 per trade, both are actually quite comparable in terms of price.

Is Zecco.com A Scam, Or Is It A Legitimate Online Broker?

What started out as an extremely liberal free stock trading offer by Zecco has morphed a bit over the years. Originally, the company built its brokerage firm on the premise that it could sustain its free stock trading model off of the interest rates and margins that it earned from customer accounts. But with interest rates at historical lows due to the recession and American brokerage customers trading less and less these days due to lingering market uncertainty, Zecco has had to alter the terms of its basic marketing pitch to meet the demands of reality. However, though qualification minimums for the free stock trading offer have been increased, Zecco has staunchly stuck by its cornerstone free stock trading feature, raising the collective eyebrows of many who perpetually wonder how the company continues to offer free trades for customers and still manage to make money and stay viable. As such, Zecco.com's practice continues to raise little red flags among the skeptics. But supporters simply note that the company is still in its growth phase and sustains itself through regular injections of stable venture capital funding, which has continued to be forthcoming. For the foreseeable future at least, it seems Zecco is relatively stable and has settled into a marketing niche of sorts (although I suspect further tweaks in its promotional terms and conditions in the coming years).

Those wondering if their money is safe with Zecco will be pleased to know that Zecco is indeed a registered member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. It's also a card carrying member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which insures and protects brokerage account customers and securities investors from financial harm in the event of a catastrophic broker dealer failure. The SIPC is the brokerage account equivalent of FDIC insurance, which protects bank based deposits. While investors are not insured for potential loss due to ordinary price fluctuations in the stock market, Zecco.com's status as a bona-fide SIPC member protects account holders from loss in the event Zecco goes bankrupt or goes out of business. In the event Zecco Trading fails, the SIPC provides insurance coverage up to a maximum of $500,000 of the customer's net equity balance, including up to $100,000 in cash. Excess SIPC insurance coverage of Zecco customer investment assets is also additionally provided through the Lloyds of London insurance company. Thus, the answer to the question of whether Zecco.com is a scam - is no. Your portfolio money is safe with Zecco.

Zecco Trading/Research Tools and Customer Service Review

The first thing you'll notice with Zecco.com's online trading interface is that the company is absolutely in love with the color pink - bright neon pink in particular. Despite this very questionable color palette choice on the surface, internally, Zecco offers a pretty robust trading platform with all of the basic investment bells and whistles you'd expect from your run of the mill discount broker. Overall, the Zecco Trading interface is pretty straight forward and fairly intuitive to use. Equity trades are made under the Trading Center tab where customers access their Account Overview and investment options, as well as receive their real time quotes and trades on market price, opening price, highs and lows, volumes, and price changes.

In terms of investment options, Zecco gives investors the opportunity to purchase individual stocks, ETF's, index funds, mutual funds, and options, for both limit and market orders. At this time, Zecco does not offer access to Treasuries, bonds, or CD deposits. Individual retirement accounts like Roth IRA's and traditional IRA's are available to Zecco customers (although note the $30 annual fee to manage IRA's). Zecco does offer dividend reinvestment but currently only permits whole share purchases - leftover dividend payments unable to purchase a whole share are deposited into your account as cash. Idle cash for Zecco accounts can be swept into a money market sweep account for higher interest rate yields, however customers need to affirmatively request this feature to enable it.

Unlike a few of the other deep discount brokerages in the market today, Zecco also offers a currency trading feature via its Zecco Forex trading platform. This is a nice bonus trading perk for those seeking a consolidated one stop shopping source for their diversified trading needs.

In terms of investment research, stock trading analysis, and financial education, Zecco provides users free online access to most of the basic investment research sources that you'd expect from low cost brokers. There are a variety of premium tools available, but many of the premium research and online analysis tools are only available via extra monthly or annual fee subscriptions. My recommendation is to utilize Zecco for trading purposes only due to its extremely low cost perks for individual stock and ETF trades. However, get your stock and fund research elsewhere. Zecco's educational videos for beginners are amusingly worth looking into however. If not just to admire or gawk at the rather gratuitous Zecco ladies that host the Zecco video shows, they are somewhat educational and informative, particularly for newbies to the world of investing. If the Zecco Sirens don't answer your introductory investment questions, you may want to visit the ZeccoShare Community online forum���� for answers or some socially assisted enlightenment. There is wide berth of information and active stock market discussions going on in the ZeccoShare Community forums, groups, and blogs. Surprisingly, I found the ZeccoShare forums to be remarkably free of pumpers and dumpers - spammers trying to spread misinformation to affect stock price movements. The same can't be said for other popular stock market forums like Google or Yahoo Finance's message boards.

Zecco's weak point centers around its somewhat infamous customer service reputation. Most of the online complaints and negative reviews you'll read about focus on the broker company's customer service reputation. Due to its rapid explosion in growth, the company has not devoted sufficient resources to improving its customer service, although I will concede, it is gradually improving. During my years as a Zecco customer, I have only had a handful of customer service interactions with Zecco and during those times, I've never really encountered any substantial problems worth remarking on. However, I'm sure there are plenty of Zecco customers with strong viewpoints willing to share their thoughts (both positive and negative). Zecco offers e-mail informational support and telephone customer support through its toll free line at (877) 700-7862. The company is currently pushing out a new live chat support feature but the online tool seems to be still in the troubleshooting phase at the time of this writing.

Zecco's New Online Broker Account Opening Process

As is the case with most online brokerages these days, the Zecco new account opening process is remarkably quick and efficient. The Zecco online application for new trading accounts is pretty straightforward and easy to follow. Be prepared to enter all of your personal information, including notations about your employment details, stock trading experience, and investment goals. These details are all pretty standard fare with brokerage account registrations nowadays.

In terms of new account funding, you can start up your Zecco Trading account with a check, money transfer, or via a recommended ACH transaction through your existing bank account. Those that want to fund their new Zecco account via an electronic ACH transfer from their bank account will need to undergo the customary two small deposits verification test. The deposit verification process ensures proper ownership of the transferring bank account and greatly expedites future ACH fund transfers from the same account. The bank account link up process takes 2-3 days, but it's worth it.

Overall, Zecco is a pretty competitively priced discount broker ideal for individual stock and ETF traders and investors. Even without its offer of free stock trades, Zecco remains one of the cheapest deep discount online stock brokerages out there today. Although frankly, if you are willing to pay a tad more in the way of commissions and fees for a more advanced and highly rated platform, I'd recommend either TradeKing or ING Share Builder (remember to take advantage of ShareBuilder promo codes for new account bonuses). But if low cost trading is your game and you seek an online community to bounce stock ideas off of, discount broker Zecco is worth a look.

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17 Responses to “Zecco Review: Free Online Stock Trading”

Jeff says:May 24, 2009 at 10:15 am

So does using these Zecco Siren girls help or hurt your brand I wonder? I'm sure there will be a few new brokerage customers curious about watching the attractive Zecco girl videos, but do they really promote the brand image in any positive way? Is their marketing assumption that most potential stock market traders and investors are male or interested in looking at attractive ladies talk about complex subjects they likely know nothing about? It's just rather sexist in my opinion...but what do i know? After all..... I signed up with Zecco originally after one of those videos caught my eye. Lol

NYC_Stock_Trader says:May 24, 2009 at 12:57 pm

Zecco offers free stock trades-yes. But they are not the most complete or all-in-one online broker for all of my investing needs. I'm a big investor (assets in excess of $100,000+). I would rather go with a more established and long standing brokerage firm with more mutual funds tools and selections, and enhanced customer service support than Zecco Trading, which I believe only started up sometime in the early 2000's. Yeah Zecco charges only $4.50 per trade and the premium brokers charge something like $15-25 per trade, but the service and online features you get with the bigger stock broker companies are worth it.

I recommend brokers like Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard, and even more discount ones like TD Ameritrade and Etrade. TradeKing and Sharebuilder are decent as well. Zecco is probably the most stripped down version of them all. Yes it's super cheap in terms of individual stock purchases, but like you said, you get what you pay for.

For more information and editorial reviews/ratings, I suggest checking out the annual reviews given by Smart Money, Barron's Kiplinger's, JD Power and Associates, and Consumer Reports.Org. They've been reviewing for years and you'll notice that the professional surveys tend to wind up with the same top brokers. They'll offer you a more credible review and picture than some of the pf bloggers out there

Zecco Share Member says:May 25, 2009 at 6:16 pm

Zecco is not the best discount broker or the top online broker overall, but at a mere $4.50 per broker trade and 10 free monthly equity transactions a month, you can't beat that type of deal. They offer all the stuff you'd expect from a basic trading setup. $0 Stock Trades at Zecco-Up to 10 free trades per month for qualified investors. Yah it is indeed a marketing gimmick, but it's otherwise legitimate. But Yes, get your research material elsewhere and easily pocket the savings IMO.

AMH says:May 26, 2009 at 3:48 pm

Why not just use a well known online broker and worry less about potential scams. Some of these site are truly penny wise and pound foolish.

Broker Blogger Reader says:May 29, 2009 at 4:17 pm

Yeah it's best to stick with the oldies and goodies when it comes to the top brokerages. The established brokerages like Schwab, Vanguard, Etrade, Muriel Siebert, & Fidelity require more fees and trading charges, but they've got great customer service and established reps. They've also got the impressive research tools and fancy real time charting etc. But I wouldn't discount the little online brokerages out. They have their place in almost niche cost trading. Like Zecco isn't the best overall in terms of features, but their low cost structure and free monthly trading offer is good for individual stock traders and those who trade ETF's. Maybe not mutual funds but for individual stocks they are great. Tradeking is also decent for individual traders too

April says:May 31, 2009 at 8:31 pm

Zecco is a scam!! Don't fall for the free trades and discount terms. Go with TradeKing instead. It's better rated, has better customer service, and has won more awards. Why else would a company increase the minimum balance requirement of its free trading deal unless it was having financial issues??

Dirk says:June 1, 2009 at 2:38 pm

Haha..the Zecco ladies are my favorite part! Yeah probably doesn't do much for Zecco's credibility but they are nice on the eye and makes the broker different from the rest. What else can you do for a broker that insists on using bright pink as its primary color!

Daryan says:June 25, 2009 at 10:24 am

If you are seriously trading, why would you need customer service anyway? CS has improved greatly over the last year. Just a couple days ago I sent an order to exercise a call option and sell at the market sue to the B/A spread and it was completed 10 minutes after my e-mail. I haven't had any problems at all on that end.

The research stinks, S&P only, but analysts are worthless for the most part anyway, so why bother.

My only gripe is lack of trigger orders, trailing options stops, etc, but this is only a minor issue and requires just a bit more effort on my part which is probably good anyway. Execution is first rate.

Paying 20 bucks per trade for absolutely nothing is ridiculous unless you need the software with schwab etc. I use metastock, so not a big issue in my world.

No2Zecco says:July 2, 2009 at 12:13 pm

I would just like to share my latest experience with zecco when I tried to withdrawal money…Here we go! First I have in my ������Available Balance' $32.00…I liquidated one of my stocks totaling about $200.00 on Friday…I made a request for ***Available Funds*** on Saturday. Of course the $200.00 unsettled funds were not part of that request because it was unsettled. Well come Monday they submitted my request for **Available Funds** but I recieved an email saying they were denying my request. I made a call and they informed me I had unsettled trades out there….I said I know but I made a request for **Available Balance**…They told me "That is not how our accounting dept sees it" At this time they also informed me I was going to be charged $20 for my request because I checked a box when requesting my money to waive the waiting period of unsettled trades to receive my money. I said when I made the request for withdrawal of funds, there was no check box that gave me that option. They informed me that it may be my computer because it my have ������Blocked' the pop-up for security purposes…I chuckled needless to say. Anyhow, they then informed me, I needed to call in to verify "I" checked a box that I didn't know was checked because of a pop-up that never came up because of sercurity on my pc…Otherwise, they would have and did deny my request. I said so what your telling me is…Although I made a request for **Available Balance** (no matter how much I had in there) they were going to deny my request because my trade the previous week that had nothing to do with my requested withdrawal was not available…. And….I never called in on something I didn't know was **Automatically** checked regardeless if I knew about it or not, you were going to deny my request. Futhermore, the $20 that I was being charged for no waiting period of unsettled funds obviously was still not going to get the withdrawal settled. I am still confused.******* I then made a request while on the phone with customer service…There was no option to choose to add $20 to waive the waiting period and….I did not even see a pop-up blocker message to give me the option to view the so called pop-up….Hmmmm!!! Sounds like a Madoff spin-off to me…But what do I know. I just requested my ***Available Balance**…Honestly, I only did it to see how long it would take to recieve my money. Now, this has led me to defect back to ing sharebuilder…I guess in this case you really do get what you pay for….You make the call on this one!!!!

SoCal says:July 4, 2009 at 12:27 am

I have used Zecco for over a year, so I was there for the transition from completely free trades to the requirement of an account balance.

First off, it's a discount broker. I don't understand the argument of selecting, say, TDAmeritrade over Zecco. I have accounts at both. Zecco offers the same service as TDAmeritrade, but at a lower price. I haven't moved all my assets to Zecco, nor will I. I just don't trade that much.

For what it offers, Zecco is good. I was actually glad that the company started charging for trades with those having a balance of under $25k; it gives me confidence for the future.

The website can be a bit klunky; however, I have no problem in recommdending Zecco. Try it; you'll like it!

Zecco is not a scam. Those of you calling Zecco Trading a scam obviously have not opened an account and actually used Zecco

There are many more things out there are scammy than this company. Just because a discount brokerage firm tacks on certain stipulations to get access to free online trades does not necessarily make it a full blown scam operation. The same probably can be said for online promotions such as the free credit score deals that sites like FreeCreditReport.com offer. They have fine print that the consumer ought to read carefully before engaging in. Use your head people and look before you leap.

cfcwgjius says:July 15, 2010 at 5:50 pm

Yeah I do think a jump from $2500 to $25000 is a big leap for me to get 10 free trade.
And to have an issue with withdrawaling money from the trading acc. is something I don't like either. As for customer service, I do think that the firm need to do a good job on solving the problems that new or existing customers have. I had one attempt to open an acc. at Zecco a few years back, and it consumed me months but stilll my application was apparently lost in the process, and to this day I still don't know who's responsible for it. Then there'll be technical issues like long and short on one stock the same time, and acc. book keeping concerns as well.

tim says:August 5, 2010 at 9:12 am

The website can be a bit klunky; however, I have no problem in recommdending Zecco. Try it; you'll like it!

Stocks Buy says:August 6, 2010 at 6:22 am

I said I know but I made a request for **Available Balance**They told me That is not how our accounting dept sees it�� At this time they also informed me I was going to be charged $20 for my request because I checked a box when requesting my money to waive the waiting period of unsettled trades to receive my money. I said when I made the request for withdrawal of funds, there was no check box that gave me that option.

Alton Delmote says:August 11, 2010 at 2:06 am

Penny stocks are difficult to be dealt with if you lack in properly studying their behaviors. I have been doing well with my stocks, and that the reason that I know that you can do well with them, too. Never think that I keep all day watching these stocks as I have many other things to attend to. But I have taken a wise step for which I am able to do well with my stocks. I have subscribed to the stocks newsletter at www.pennyinvest.com which helps me to determine the best stocks to pick and the poor stocks to dispose. So, I am not required to make any studies but I follow their recommendations.

Mike Kepler says:November 3, 2010 at 8:45 am

I've veen a customer of zecco and they are absolut scam.
First for withdring money they ask 50 usd and they add 20 usd for withdrawal cancellation. They charged me 20 usd for cancellation + 50 usd but i did not cancel my orderof withdrawal.
Second, their margin account is pure theft. I never borrowed money from, always traded with my cash and they charged about 200 usd commissions on margin trading !!!
Last and not least, their execution in options trading has severe slippage even on the most liquid index the SPY. I lost about 2000 usd due to lag between my order and the execution if I sum all my operation (ex: I have set a limit order for covering a short of SPY call at 1,50 USD per unit and I get filled 1,53 X 200 contracts).
They are thieves, you've been warned.

Mike Kepler says:November 3, 2010 at 8:49 am

PS: Concerning the example of the limit, they do that all the times not for only one operation and the most scary part is that they change the history of the trades at will (so you have no evidence that you have been robbed unless you take screeshots during the trading session).

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This website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise.

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the savings offers
appearing on this site are from advertisers from which this website receives compensation for being listed here.
This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). These offers do not represent all deposit accounts available.

Disclaimer: Because rates and offers from advertisers shown on this website change frequently, please visit referenced sites for current
information. This website may be compensated by companies mentioned through advertising, affiliate programs or otherwise.